


she's gonna save me (call me baby)

by bookishandbossy



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: F/M, Fake/Pretend Relationship, Flirting, Hollywood, Slow Build
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-14
Updated: 2017-07-14
Packaged: 2018-12-01 21:51:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,290
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11495463
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bookishandbossy/pseuds/bookishandbossy
Summary: Daisy Johnson needs a new boyfriend (at least according to her publicist). Someone to pose on red carpets and be photographed getting coffee with.Robbie Reyes is entirely more than she bargained for.





	she's gonna save me (call me baby)

**Author's Note:**

> Title from "Jackie and Wilson" by Hozier. 
> 
> Expanded from a ficlet written for the lovely superirishbreakfasttea's birthday over on Tumblr.

This is how Daisy Johnson’s Wednesday morning starts.

“You need a new boyfriend.” 

“Sorry?” Daisy blinks up at Raina and thinks longingly about the donut she had to abandon at craft services. It’s six in the morning, she’s been in wardrobe and makeup for over an hour, and Raven, the blue-haired makeup tech, took away her coffee ten minutes ago so she could apply Daisy’s lipstick. 

“It’s been months since you broke up with Lincoln and the paparazzi are getting bored. Last week, I saw a story claiming that you were into Scientology,” Raina says crisply, fingers already flying over the screen of her phone. Raina, of course, looks like she’s been awake for hours: signature flower-printed dress cinched tight at her waist, designer handbag dangling from her arm, and red lipstick perfectly applied. In the year since Daisy and Bobbi hired Raina as her publicist, she’s never seen the other woman look anything less than perfect. Daisy suspects a deal with demonic forces.

“We need to give them a better story. Set photos of you getting coffee with Natasha Romanov and doing your own fight scenes only go so far,” Raina adds.

“But I’m not seeing anyone right now.” Literally. She’s been filming Nick Fury’s latest spy thriller for the past five weeks and the only people she’s seen outside of the set have been Raina, Bobbi, her agent Melinda May, and her best friend Jemma, who flew out to Antigua for a visit when they were filming there and had to sign about ten nondisclosure agreements. 

“It’s not going to be a real boyfriend,” Raina tells her. “Obviously. I’ll collect some suitable candidates and you can pick whichever one you like best.”

Then she’s gone, sweeping off in a clatter of heels and expensive perfume. Daisy just gapes after her. Raven has to redo all her lipstick.

 

“It’s not a terrible idea,” Bobbi says over Skype. Daisy’s sprawled across the bed in her hotel room, laptop propped on her stomach and picking all the bits of raw onion out of her room service salad. 

“But it’s not a good idea either?” Daisy asks hopefully.

“It might be a good idea,” Bobbi admits. “Remember how much you got asked about it on the last red carpet?”

“You mean the one where you nearly punched that guy from the _Daily Bugle_ in the nose? That was a good time.” Daisy sighs and pushes herself upright, propping another pillow behind her back. “If I get a fake boyfriend, do I get a dog too? We could take it for walks on the beach and let the paps take pictures of us.”

“One dog,” Bobbi says firmly. “And only one.”

“You're no fun.”

A week later, Raina shows up on set with a manila folder full of handsome men. They all kind of look the same—rugged jawlines, perfectly tousled hair, piercing gazes that half make her want to roll her eyes and half remind her uncomfortably of Lincoln. A significant proportion of them are named Chris. She's shuffling the photos around the table, catching glimpses of _Starfleet_ star Peter Quill's cocky grin and teen heartthrob Peter Parker's signature hoodie (Peter Parker? Seriously? Daisy's pretty sure he's at least four years younger than her) when one of the photos jumps out at her. Robbie Reyes. She's met him once or twice at industry parties and she's seen most of his movies, but she only knows him in that vague way that everyone knows everyone else in Hollywood. Still, there's something about this particular shot. He doesn't look like he rolled off an assembly line and even though it's a standard headshot, there's a spark in his dark eyes that her gaze keeps flicking back to. 

“Him,” she declares and grabs the photo off the table. 

“Really?” Raina asks with a perfectly arched eyebrow. “You’re going to pick that one?”  
“You told me I could pick whoever I wanted,” Daisy replies stubbornly, staring at the glossy headshots spread across the table. It’s her fake boyfriend, after all. If she’s going to spend the next few months being photographed getting coffee and posing on the red carpet with someone, she should at least get to choose who it is.

“But Robbie Reyes? Really? You think that the tabloids are going to react well to America’s sweetheart dating the same guy who once punched James Hellfire in the face at an afterparty?” Raina counters. 

“Hellfire is an asshole,” Bobbi interjects. “And everyone who was at that party says that Reyes didn’t throw the first punch.”

Daisy gives her a grateful look. She hired Bobbi as her manager the minute she turned eighteen and the other woman’s never steered her wrong. Bobbi’s the one who landed her a supporting role in last year’s Best Picture and the lead in last summer’s biggest comedy and even if Raina may be the reason she’s been appearing on more and more magazine covers lately, Bobbi hired Raina as her publicist in the first place.

“You put him on the list,” Daisy tells Raina. “Therefore, I get to pick him if I want to. And I do.”

And that’s it. Robbie Reyes, action star and former street racer, is now her latest celebrity boyfriend.

 

“I don’t eat anything with kale in it,” Robbie tells her. Their first coffee date is scheduled for today, at an ultra-hip clean juice place that the paparazzi camp outside of on a regular basis and Robbie Reyes may jump out of burning buildings in his movies, but he looks terrified at the prospect of green juice.

“So your publicist suggested this place too?” Raina had spent a full fifteen minutes talking about their acai bowls and how the lighting would flatter Daisy’s new haircut until Daisy finally caved and agreed to be photographed sharing an order of avocado toast.

“Thought it would make me seem more approachable.” Robbie shrugs. “It was this or get a public Snapchat.”

“So I’m better than Snapchat? I’m flattered.”

“You’re a lot better than Snapchat. I used to watch your show growing up,” he admits, digging his hands deep in his pockets. “My brother Gabe was really into it.”

“Just your brother?” she teases. “Who did Skye take to senior prom?”

“She was supposed to go with Grant Ward but after he turned out to be a total dick, she ended up dancing with her next-door neighbor Luke and having their first kiss underneath the disco ball centerpiece,” he says almost automatically, a flush spreading down his neck when she tries to hide her smile.

“I’ve seen your movies too,” she blurts out. “My friend Jemma and I get takeout and beer and watch them about once a month. It's—it’s strange, seeing someone in person when you’re used to seeing them fifteen feet high on a screen.”

“Good strange or bad strange?” Robbie asks.

“Good strange. I think.” She hopes.

“Hey, how mad do you think they’d be if we ditched this place and went somewhere with real food? I know where we can get the best coffee milk shake in LA,” he offers. “The paps can get some excellent shots of us driving away at top speed.”

“So do you drive like any of your characters do?”

“Only one way to find out.” His grin is unlike anything she’s seen on screen, wide and open and electric in a way that sends shock waves sliding down her spine.

Daisy has a feeling that Robbie Reyes might be more than she’d bargained for. She might be okay with that.

The pictures of them together come out a few days later. One of her in the passenger seat of his sleek black charger, head tilted back against the leather as she slips her massive sunglasses on. Another of them at the coffee place, leaning towards each other and laughing as he carelessly snags a French fry off her plate. They look good together. More natural than she thought they would. 

The headlines are absolutely cringe-worthy, of course. “America's Sweetheart Taking a Ride on the Wild Side?” screams one. “Inside Daisy and Robbie's Torrid Romance: an Insider Tells All” proclaims another. Another magazine claims that they met at a yoga retreat in Bali and are planning to launch a lifestyle brand together. She snaps a picture of it while she's waiting in the checkout line at the supermarket to buy Ben and Jerry's, celebrity disguise firmly on, and sends it to Robbie before she can think twice about it. (He's saved in her phone as a ghost and a car emoji.)

The reply comes back almost instantly: _They made me do yoga for one of my movies, actually. Had to do all of it at this studio deep in the Inland Empire so the paps wouldn't find me._

_Are there pictures?!!!_ she texts back. She would give up quite a lot to see Robbie Reyes attempting tree pose. 

_None that I'm going to let you see._

They start texting semi-regularly after that. It's mostly silly photos or dog videos or articles she finds online about the top ten greatest movie stunts of all time or the best new places to get seafood tacos in LA. Nothing important, but she likes it anyway. She tells Bobbi that it's so their relationship will seem believable if she loses her phone in a club and someone sells it to the tabloids. But it may also be because she just likes talking to him. Robbie Reyes is prickly and guarded and would have a long, long list of speeding tickets if he wasn't a celebrity and doesn't like dark chocolate, which is seriously questionable. But he knows every good breakfast place in LA and lets her browse through shelf after shelf of fantasy paperbacks with cheesy covers, patiently dealing with the people who come over to talk to them, and more than anyone else she's met, he seems to understand what it's like to be her. 

He started his career at sixteen, going straight from street races in the back alleys of LA to playing a brooding werewolf on a teen paranormal drama set in a small seaside town with the unfortunate name of Destiny Cove. She started hers at fourteen, going from cereal commercials and three-episode arcs on Disney channel shows to playing the adorably wisecracking daughter of an unconventional family in a dramedy set in a small New England town with the unfortunate name of Apple Blossom. He spent significant amounts of time looking brooding. She spent lots of time crying on cue and looking torn between attractive men. But both of them know what it's like to have fame suddenly come bearing down on you. To have people look at you and see your character. (Or even worse, to have people look at you and see someone they've made up out of late-night television interviews and magazine headlines.)

“Do you really do all your own stunts?” she asks him over hand-rolled sushi at a tiny place that's supposed to be the next big thing. (Raina told her to order the sea bass and green tea cheesecake and Instagram a photo of her and Robbie splitting the cheesecake.)

“Most of them. There's a few from when I started out that they had to use a stuntman for because I screamed my ass off the first time they dropped me off a fifteen-story building.” Robbie grins at her and leans forward to snag another piece of sushi. “But I figured that the action route was better than rom coms.”

“Hey!” she protests. “The rom com is an undervalued art form. Right now, I acknowledge that it's pretty shitty but all those movies from the 90's and early 2000's? Jemma and I watch Bridget Jones' Diary whenever one of us is having a bad day. And if you go back even farther, to Audrey Hepburn and screwball comedies...”

Daisy trails off, aware that she's been stabbing the air with her chopsticks pretty furiously. She just...the first movie she ever remembers seeing all the way through was Sleepless in Seattle. Her mom was out for the night, holding court somewhere, and the grad student her mom had enlisted as a babysitter had grabbed the first video she could find at Blockbuster and then promptly escaped to the den to work on her thesis. So Daisy had made two packages of microwave popcorn, climbed up on the counters to where her mom kept the M &Ms, and fallen in love right alongside Meg Ryan and Tom Hanks. With the radio call-in show and the Empire State Building at Valentine's Day and the look the two of them exchanged at the movie's end, like they'd found what they'd been waiting for all along. With whatever it was that made people chase after someone through airports and across cities and into potentially humiliating situations. (Not that anyone's ever chased after her.)

“So you're going to make a good one?” Robbie says, saving her from going on a embarrassing tangent about how she's pretty sure rom coms have ruined her for all future relationships.

“If I find the right script, yeah, I'd really like to. I didn't even get scripts for comedies for the longest time. Just teen melodramas and action movies where I fought monsters in my underwear. Sometimes they even specified the color of the underwear.” She grimaces and spears a piece of fish with undue force. “I wasn't even supposed to see the script for Band on the Run. Bobbi stole it for me.”

She'd fallen in love with the script, a comedy about an all-girl rock band that gets caught up in an international spy ring, from the first moment Bobbi had slipped it to her during one of their marathon lunches and promptly started calling in every favor they had stored up to get an audition with the executive producers. They'd wanted someone else for the part. (Someone blonde.) She'd wanted it more. 

“I don't think anyone else could have pulled off hitting Alexander Pierce in the head with an electric guitar. I saw it in the theater,” he admits. “Wore a hoodie and glasses.”

“And your people let you get away with that?” Daisy's pretty sure that the last unplanned public appearance she made was at the age of thirteen.

“What they don't know won't hurt them.” Robbie grins at her and she feels a little zip of heat rush through her. He doesn't smile much in his movies, or even on the red carpet, and she kind of likes the idea of seeing something that no one else does. 

“I miss going to the movies,” she says wistfully.

“So we go. Easy as that.”

 

They see the latest superhero movie at a random multiplex, in elaborate disguises that they buy from a thrift store. (He refuses to buy the lime-green pants she makes him try on.) They mix M&Ms in with the popcorn and rate all the trailers on a scale from 1 to 10 and place bets on which special effect cost the most money. On their way out of the movie theater, the paparazzi find them, swarming over with cameras and shouting questions and crowding her until she and Robbie are pushed over to the very edge of the sidewalk. 

“Shit,” Robbie mutters. “I'm sorry—I didn't think they'd catch up to us this quickly. My manager's going to murder me.”

“Don't worry,” Daisy tells him and tries very hard to keep herself from sagging against his side with a sigh. “Mine's going to do it first.”

Unapproved photo ops are the bane of Raina's existence and every time a pap catches Daisy running around the corner to get coffee and a muffin or (even worse) going to Walgreens, it takes at least two yoga classes for her to calm down. This—her ridiculous 70's suede miniskirt, the sunglasses that keep slipping down her nose, the fact that she's pretty sure she still has popcorn crumbs on her shirt—is going to trigger a meltdown of epic proportions. Raina's already irritated about the fact that Daisy still refuses to let the paparazzi snap a photo of her and Robbie--

The idea hits her like a train and she doesn't stop to consider any of the consequences before she grabs Robbie by the front of his shirt and kisses him. 

It's—it's not what she expects. On screen, he kisses wildly, the instant before he's about to jump off a helicopter or lose the girl. It's hot and desperate in every way you'd expect: open mouths, hands in hair, gasping breaths that each last exactly three seconds. But this kiss is...steady. Surprising in spite of itself.

It's the kind of kiss that she's still thinking about when she goes to bed later that night.

 

“So you're willing to get caught making out on a sidewalk outside a random movie theater in the Valley but not at one of the many nightclubs that have been begging me to get an exclusive photo of you two there?” Raina demands. 

“Robbie hates nightclubs,” Daisy says with a shrug and eats another sweet potato fry. They're at a new burger place that Bobbi swears by and she's wondering if she can get away with ordering soft-serve after this. “I thought you said that the public liked seeing me acting normal?”

“Accessible, not normal,” Raina explains and spears another piece of lettuce. Daisy's still confused.

“I don't think they need to be going out and drinking every night. What if they go to a festival?” Bobbi, her blessed savior and currently her favorite person in the world, offers. “Or a brewery or something. Somewhere young and hip.”

“I thought I was already young and hip,” Daisy sniffs, mock-offended. The fries she's stuffed into her mouth kind of ruin the effect.

“You're twenty-five,” Raina says matter-of-factly. “But we can work around that.”

 

“Apparently you are saving me from being a spinster with a thousand cats,” Daisy tells him as she takes another sip of her beer. They're at some new brewery by the beach that does tasting flights and massive pretzels with five kinds of dipping sauce and they've already had two servers come over to talk to them and try to look cool. (They had to promise to take pictures in the brewery's black-and-white photo booth for the customer photo wall.)

“Only in Hollywood.” Robbie shakes his head, tracing patterns in the condensation on his glass with one finger. They've been here for hours, sitting out on the patio and watching the sun sink into the ocean, and their conversation has slipped into that easy rhythm, comfortable and well-worn, that they always seem to find. She's figured out that she can be quiet and loud with him, that he'll let her ramble on about her passion of the moment and lapse into silence when she's turning the words over in her head and that he'll be okay with all of it. Robbie Reyes is a good listener, at least to her. No one would ever have expected it. And a little bit of her loves that she gets to know that. 

“Best and worst place in the world.”

Robbie just nods in agreement, his other hand brushing against hers where it's folded on the table. He's always warm and Daisy finds herself inching closer, wanting something. To loop her hand through his

“Why you'd do it?” she blurts out. “Sign up for all of this?”

“I love the movies,” he says, like the simplest thing in the world. “Why did you?”

“The same, I think. I wanted to make something that people would love,” she admits. “That they'd remember years later.”

“I think people are going to have a hard time forgetting you,” Robbie says softly. 

She leans forward across the table and kisses him. She tells herself it's for the cameras. It may be. (It may not be.)

 

A week later, they do their first red carpet together. She brings him to the premiere of her new movie, in a slim suit with a hint of blue that mirrors the shimmering midnight blue of her dress. She's almost as tall in him in her heels and his arm fits snugly around her waist and at the end of the night, he picks her up and swings her into the limo when she can't walk in her stilettos any longer. 

That's the photo that ends up splashed across all the coverage of the night: her in his arms like a bride, the chiffon of her dress splashing down over his arms, him leaning down to whisper something in her ear, her head tipped up towards him to listen and her mouth already half open in a laugh.

She saves one of them on her phone, buried among photos of the beach and eggs Benedict, and every so often she opens it up and looks at it. Only for a little while. 

 

He lets her drive his car, after approximately five hours of pleading and three cross-her-heart-and-hope-to-die promises that she won't hurt his baby. Admittedly, he only lets her drive the car for about fifteen minutes and he fidgets in the passenger seat the entire time but still. It's a start. 

“I think your car likes me,” she announces after they finally pull over.

Robbie just quirks an eyebrow at her and holds out his hand for the keys. 

Three days later, he lets her drive his car for a whole forty-five minutes and he lets her pick the music. 

“I'm going to ruin your whole tough-guy image, you know,” she says happily and turns up her favorite boy band playlist. They have plans to don their best celebrity disguises and go to the Last Bookstore so she can find more cheesy vintage sci-fi novels and he can flip through records, with a possible stop for soft-serve on the way. It's not exactly on Raina's list of pre-approved appearances but not everything has to be planned. Besides, Jemma's out of town for a conference and Bobbi is hounding some up-and-coming British screenwriter about a script she wants for Daisy and if she spends one more day inside her house, she might go crazy. And she just wanted to see him. They're friends. Friends spend time together. 

“Whole thing's not what it's cracked up to be. I used to be a street racer, you know,” he says. “Nearly bashed my head in a few times. Had a car go up in flames on me and got out just in time. My brother was pretty happy when I stopped doing it.”

She doesn't say anything—she's not sure what exactly she could say—but at the next red light, she reaches over to grab his hand and holds on tight. 

 

The day after that, she invites him over to her house. She gives him the passcode to her gate and buys the snacks that she remembers he likes and is nervous for no reason at all. It was Raina's suggestion, getting a few shots of them slipping in and out of her house to walk her dog on the beach before they went out to dinner. (“Nauseatingly domestic, please and thank you.”) It's staged, she tells herself. But for some reason, she desperately wants Robbie Reyes to approve of her framed vintage movie posters and bookcases groaning under the weight of paperbacks and ridiculous swan-shaped pool that she had put in with her first big paycheck. 

“I use the pool at least once a week, you know,” she tells him while he turns and takes it all in. “There's a hot tub in the swan's beak.”

“Don't believe it.” He shakes his head, smiling as he spots her Star Trek poster. (She talked him into watching a few episodes with her last week. He admitted that he liked it more than he was expecting to.)

“You want to go swimming?” Daisy says before she can take it back, sliding open the door to her backyard. “You can experience the legendary hot tub for yourself.”

“I didn't bring a suit with me.”

“Doesn't matter.” She pulls her sundress over her head and lets it drop to the deck and she—she's going to dive right into the pool. But his eyes catch on her just for a minute. They don't go anywhere besides her face. She blushes anyway. 

 

Later, they're sitting on her couch with Chinese food. He's wearing a pair of sweatpants she found in her guest room that are comically small for him and laughing at one of her terrible jokes and eying the last remaining potsticker. She leans over to kiss him precisely because there's nothing romantic about it. No fireworks or sunsets or swelling strings or spotlight trained perfectly to catch all her best angles. It is a scene that would be left on the cutting room floor in one of her movies, a beat sacrificed in the rush to the next plot point. 

But he looks easy with her in a way she's never seen him look with anyone else. And he tries the strangest things when she insists on ordering them. And he lets her sidle up against his shoulder and lean into him when she needs to. And maybe there's something romantic about it after all. 

She kisses him with everything she's got and he kisses her back like he's been waiting for it, pulling her into his lap and burying his hands in her hair. 

“I—I think I want to try this for real,” she tells him when she finally pulls back. “No scripts, no cameras. Just us.”

“ _Es real_ ,” he says and kisses her again. 

_It is real._


End file.
